The Debate Rages On...

Greenberg vs. Penn: When Pollsters Attack!

By Jon Cohen
Twice in his career, Democratic pollster Mark Penn has replaced Stanley Greenberg as the top pollster for a major national political campaign, first in Bill Clinton's presidential reelection effort and later during Tony Blair's bid for a third term as prime minister. Their long-standing rivalry turned ugly last week, as the Democratic polling titans traded accusations across the blogosphere following publication of Greenberg's book, "Dispatches From the War Room: In the Trenches With Five Extraordinary Leaders."

In the book, Greenberg criticizes Penn's work for Blair, calling his methods "errant" and "rigged." He adds that Penn's failure to provide "the information normally delivered by a professional research organization" betrayed his client, boxing Blair into the pursuit of a mythical "married mums" vote.

Greenberg also has choice words for Penn's recent book "Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow's Big Changes," intoning, "If I ever come to think about my work in such terms, then take me out and shoot me."

Asked by Mark Blumenthal of pollster.com to respond, Penn didn't hold back, accusing Greenberg of one of the most embarrassing failings in Washington: "Stan didn't [have the information] because he was not in the loop." He later added that Greenberg's attack amounts to "more sour grapes than reality."

The crossfire has upended the typical public chumminess of Washington's pollerati. From across the pond, Philip Gould, who as an adviser to Blair's Labour Party worked with both men, tried to mediate, e-mailing pollster.com that Greenberg and Penn "are very different pollsters ... but both have significant contributions to make."

Still-secret Bush Justice Department memos are believed to have approved the covert use of classified, silent microwave radiation weapons on U.S. citizens -- "targeted" under the pretext of the "war on terror" as "undesirables" and "dissidents."

Victims, including the journalist who authored the articles linked below, say these painful, debilitating and illness-inducing microwave assaults constitute torture and "slow-kill" (a military descriptive) homicide -- what could be described as an American genocide.

Victims of these assaults say their family finances are decimated by an array of secret "programs of personal financial destruction" that involve the forced cooperation of private enterprise; surveillance and interception of mail and telecommunications; and the forging of billing, utility, banking and mortgage statements -- what they charge is a process of expropriation and theft by deception.

Sources say these covert programs were justified by the Bush Justice Department under legal theories that are said to include a suspected "nexus to terrorism" and, according to a source, the legal theory that weapons and/or medical experimentation on U.S. citizens is permissible if subjects are under federal investigation for suspected offenses.

These microwave weapons assaults have continued under the Obama administration, and are facilitated by an "extrajudicial punishment network" enabled by federal agencies; local police nationwide; and "community gang stalker" citizen vigilantes fronted by government-funded community policing and volunteer organizations.

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Victims have asked the FBI/Justice Department to launch a civil rights investigation. They say officials have told them they see nothing to investigate, refuse to run down leads, and hint that victim accounts are delusional.

Victims maintain that marginalizing the persecuted as "unstable" or "mentally ill" is a tactic being used to cover up crimes against humanity, a highly organized and well-funded social genocide.